KARL YAMASHITA - photographer • videographer

KARL YAMASHITA - photographer • videographer

About

Karl Yamashita is an Internationally published glamour photographer. Born in Los Angeles California. Karl’s interest in photography started in 2006 when he took his son Brandon to John Robert Powers in Costa Mesa California. He spent $750 for his son’s headshots which was more than he wanted to spend. Knowing it couldn’t be that hard to use a camera, Karl purchased a camera and started to take pictures after work and on weekends.

Karl started taking pictures of flowers, dogs, wildlife and odd everyday objects. One day Karl went to an organized model and photographer group shoot. He wanted to learn how to take photos of models using different lighting techniques. That is when Karl fell in love with shooting beautiful models and his passion for photography began.

Within a year Karl has been asked numerous times about his lighting and camera equipment. Around summer 2007 Karl decided to teach a lighting workshop with a fellow photographer. The first event was held at a beach which turned out great so he decided to hold another workshop at some abandoned houses in the desert in the middle of August heat! He also added a group shoot portion. This is where Karl revolutionized the group shoots and made it possible for models to make more than mere gas money and trying to sell model releases. Karl invented 1 on 1’s where models can be hired for 30 minutes at a time to shoot with that specific photographer so they can get their own unique shots. As crazy as it may sound, photographers from other countries/states like Germany, France, Alaska, Hawaii and some states from the east coast, flew out to attend his event. To Karl’s surprise, model’s were making $300-$400 plus instead of $20-$40 dollars for the day. Karl’s event turned out to be the #1 event in Southern California for many years. Even other hosts who try to host their own events would use the same wording that Karl used to promote/market his events.

Since then Karl has moved on to commercial photography and other types of shoots like sports and fitness. Karl has been taking on clients from word of mouth. When video recording was possible on DSLR’s on a reasonable budget, Karl started to make his dream come true and start to produce videos from weddings to fitness type videos.